JULY 15, 1958

HYDE PARK—Things are really moving in the way of integrated housing, it seems, because in the
last few days two efforts in this direction have come to my attention.

One of these enterprises is outside of Philadelphia. It is called Concord Park Homes
and was the first planned open occupancy homes for sale by a builder determined to
build only integrated housing. It consists of 139 three and four-bedroom homes in
the $12,000 to $16,000 range, in Trevose, Pa. All these homes have been sold and are
occupied by 55
percent
white families and 45
percent
Negro families.

The same builder has another project called Greenbelt Knoll, with 19 homes in the
higher price range of $20,000 to $30,000. This is a beautiful wooded site surrounded
by parkland on four sides, including a two-acre private park, and only one mile from
Pennypack Circle, Philadelphia. Here the home buyers are two-thirds white and one-third
Negro.

The builder of these houses is a man named Morris Milgram, who lives in the Greenbelt
development. The two sites have won a number of awards, and the builders feel they
have learned a great deal about housing and about human relations. Mr. Milgram is
now organizing "Modern Community Developers"—a nationwide organization to aid builders
of open occupancy housing with capital and advice. I found Mr. Milgram deeply interested
in his undertakings and a very vital and energetic human being.

The second housing enterprise was brought to my attention by two gentlemen—one white
and one colored. They are planning to build a kind of residential continental club
somewhere not too far away from New York, but in a rural area, to be open to both
Negro and white American citizens on an equal basis, and also to all U. N. members
or foreigners coming here from other countries in an official or semi-official capacity.

Now I am waiting to have someone announce the construction of apartment houses here
in New York city on an open occupancy basis. I have tried to find one in the area
in which I would like to live, but so far have been unsuccessful. I hope before long
to hear of such a development.

The other day I received the annual report of the Catholic Hospital Association of
the U. S. and Canada. With it came a note stressing the dedication of the nuns who
become nurses in these hospitals.

It appears that much of the early nursing in this country was done in the frontier
towns by nuns who undertook this service during the horrible cholera and plague attacks.
In the early days, too, when people were afraid of anyone who was mentally ill, it
was these same nurses who cared for them. Thus they were the pioneers in what we know
as the hospital field today. Many of them were gentlewomen who left their homes and
their families to do this type of religious work. Today, of course, these hospitals
care for people of all races and all religions. Nurses in the Jewish and Protestant
hospitals in our cities do the same. But we hear more of the devotion and type of
training that our nurses get in the city, state and Federal hospitals, as well as
in our great private centers, so that we tend to overlook the work of the nuns.